Clemens van Blitterswijk

Prof. Dr. Clemens A. van Blitterswijk graduated as cell biologist at Leiden University in 1982. He defended his PhD thesis in 1985 at the same university, on artificial ceramic middle ear implants, for which he was awarded the Jean Leray award (European Society for Biomaterials), the Marie Parijs award (University of Leiden) and the Kleijn award (University of Utrecht) in the following years. He continued his research on bone and cartilage replacement primarily. Today most of his research deals with Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine forming a unique basis of multidisciplinary research between the materials and life sciences. Prof. van Blitterswijk has authored and co-authored >400 (H index 75) scientific papers (peer reviewed, Web of Science (All Databases), one of the highest ranking Dutch scientists and under the most frequently cited in Materials Science), acts as inventor and co-inventor on over 100 patent applications, guided 60 PhD students through their PhD theses as promotor or co-promotor and currently has another 25 under his supervision. For his more recent work he received the George Winter award of the European Society for Biomaterials and was appointed Fellow of Biomaterials Science and Engineering by the international liaison committee. His research group received the maximum score of 4 fives in the QANU Research Review Chemical Engineering 3TU (Dutch Technical Universities) (evaluation of chemical engineering), in 2010. He acts and has acted on numerous advisory organs relating directly to life- and material sciences or to the economic applications thereof and held positions such as chairman of the Dutch Society for Biomaterials, treasurer of the European Society for Biomaterials and council member of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. Selection of his current functions comprise: Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Society of Art and Sciences (KNAW), Chairman of the Netherlands Forum for Regenerative Medicine (NIRM), Chairman of the Translational Regenerative Medicine (TeRM) program, (SmartMix, 25 Million), Member of the Advisory Board of the Netherlands Technology Foundation (STW), Member of the Netherlands Academy for Technology and Innovation, Member of the High Profile Group (determining strategy of ca. 1 billion Euro of public private partnership spending), Board member of Biomedical Materials (BMM) (90 million Euro initiative), During his career Prof. van Blitterswijk has co-founded multiple biomedical companies and held several functions in these organizations. He acted as CEO of IsoTis (a public life sciences company in the Netherlands) from 1996 to 2002, a company that he co-founded and grew to 150 people from scratch. In his career he raised over 140 Million Euros in funding through equity and/or grants. Resulting from his work 10 implant technologies were brought into clinical evaluation in humans. He holds 3 board positions in biomedical start-ups. He was the first scientific director of MIRA, a recently established Institute for Biomedical Technology and Technical Medicine at the University of Twente. Prof. Van Blitterswijk had an appointment at the University of Twente where, as Professor of Tissue Regeneration, he head one of the leading European labs in the field of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. Today Prof. Van Blitterswijk has an appointment at Maastricht University where, as Professor of the Department of Complex Tissue Regeneration MERLN Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine FHML, Maastricht University. He combines his professorship with being Founding Partner of the new Health Economics Fund (LSP-HEF) of the European health care investment group Life Sciences Partners (LSP) in Amsterdam. The focus is on investments in mature innovative medical technology companies that can reduce costs in health care while providing high quality health care to patients.